Cleansing the lens of cinematic perception, for your aghast befuddlement

Thursday, April 12, 2012

CinemArchetype #11: The Wild, Wise Woman

"Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good
instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild
Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an
endangered species." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PHD -Women who Run with the Wolves

There's not a lot of wise women archetypes in the movies - maybe that's because they were all burnt at the stake in the gynocide of the Middle Ages. We've largely forgotten how cool they can be. When they've appeared they've either come on as wizened old crones (hence not a sexual threat), pedantic humanitarians, buzzkill church ladies and/or fantasmagorical spirits. There are real-life icons like Jane Goodall (left), healers (Mother Theresa), TV earth mothers (Oprah), first ladies, scientists, surgeons, pilots, astronauts, and they abound in fairy tales and myth.

But in cinema, few and far between be they. There is not a single one within the entire Star Wars mythos. They have only minor side roles in Middle Earth and Hogwarts.

Is it because wise older women aren't cinematic, or do they just 'spook' us into feeling guilty, like we should finally call grandma but the thought of doing it fills with a horror we can't quite admit? I've enjoyed assembling this entire series, but I must say I've been dreading this one. Luckily there's the amazing Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women who Run with the Wolves, a book I once bought for an old girlfriend, who couldn't understand it, gave up after ten pages, and thought I was holding my knowledge of Jungian archetypal symbolism over her head, and I was. She was wise in that sense. The very existence of that book brought on a lot of fights, and maybe even broke us up and for that I am grateful. As was she. As Estes notes:

The wild wise woman has, as Estes notes, the ability to love even death, and failure, and rejection, as well as their opposites. She knows how to let go of her children (or neither bemoan the lack of) without a thought, never resisting heartbreak any more than the sky resists a passing cloud, to take all that comes as rungs on a single winding ladder, to nurture without conditions, to look upon all god's and man's works with the loving nonjudgmental eye with which she'd view her grandchild's ballet recital... Jung wrote of the 'whole self' and discovery of one's true nature as essential to one's ability to be a good parent: "Nothing has a stronger influence
psychologically on their environment and especially on their children
than the unlived life of the parent." Guiding the wise wild woman towards the universal life are the archetypes. Mothers, queens, doctors, spirits, and warriors, have lived that life, to the benefit of all us children.

1. Cate Blanchett - Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
I found the first Elizabeth to be over-plotted and over-acted, but The Golden Age is just good old-fashioned, even subversive, camp. Blanchett--having dispensed with the origin story and all the 'must rise against patriarchal oppression' historical accuracy motif-mongering--is free to play Elizabeth how she should be played, with drollery and sly spirit. A great moment comes early on when, in the midst of an ornate procession aglow in Bollywood pomp, she breaks her regal deadpan and winks at one of her friends in the crowd, but majestically and very British. Both figurehead and woman, neither repressed nor repressive, she is earth mother and sky father both, able to wear the crown without it hanging too heavy. Two steps ahead of her enemies, free of all fear, she is an iron lady and effervescent as a daisy. She's both nurturer and destroyer and, as the indirect result of having transcended sex, she is possessed with the ability to wipe out the entire Spanish armada with her virgin power and golden stormy garb, the stormy magic of the channel! She becomes what royalty was always supposed to be: a living archetype that points endlessly inwards, outwards, and upwards... and redefines fabulousness with an insect reptilian glam.

2. Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper - Night of the Hunter (1957) and as the Eternal Mother - Intolerance (1916)
What a pair of career bookends! Surely Laughton had Gish's role in the silent multi-narrative film Intolerance in mind when casting her as Rachel Cooper in Hunter. While Intolerance didn't do well at the box office, Griffith's unabashed symbolism (with Gish the archetypal mother rocking the infant of humanity in its cradle) has aged very well if Night of the Hunter (which also flopped) is any indication. Both offer a clear line between evil 'false prophets' (the child-stealing moral crusaders of Intolerance and Mitchum's scary preacher in Hunter) and the true protectors of innocence.

Gish is perfect in both roles. Vulnerable, a bit frail maybe, but iron tough. Whether enduring betrayal by a no-good man (Way Down East), the dust bowl (The Wind), the French revolution (Orphans of the Storm), or beatings at the hands of her cruel drunk father (Broken Blossoms), she wins us over to her cause through those hardscrabble Yankee eyes.

3. Pamela Brown as Catriona Potts - I Know Where I'm Going (1944)
One of my getaway fantasies is to escape out to the wilds of Kiloran and shack up with Catriona in her supremely cozy inn. Can't you see me, bonding with her troop of wolfhounds and borrowing from her loaded gun rack to go off across the moors hunting the most dangerous of game? Getting my hair wet from the wind and warm foggy damp of the isles and warming it up by the cheer of a good fire as I pour out whiskey for a small, manageable stream of cool visitors like Roger Livesy? Can you imagine it, lad? There we are, the lot of us, staring out at the windy, stormy sea while nodding in and out of woozy romantic black-outs. I would not change it. Such a feeling is, I hear, hardly unique to me, but do they imagine the moors just right? Ah, such a life. I'd do anything for it, except to actually go to Scotland.

4. Julie Andrews - Mary Poppins (1964)

"Blown by the wind with an umbrella, she comes down from the clouds in
response to the Banks' advertisement for a nanny. Her personality can be
abrasive at times. She is not very sympathetic to the children other
than in the Disney movie adaptation. There have been many questions as to whether Mary Poppins is human or
not (perhaps an extraterrestrial disguised as a human)--that is for the
reader to decide. P.L Travers said that Mary Poppins is 'a pretty young
woman, a nurturing mother and a wise old woman, all in one.' Thus, Mary
Poppins may be a reference to the "Triple Goddess," a frequently
occurring archetype in many world cultures." -- Woo Factor

5. Katharine Hepburn

She's already shown up in this series as devouring mother (Suddenly Last Summer) and anima (Bringing up Baby), but I don't dare leave her out of this. In films like her Spence collaborations or On Golden Pond she proved she could match any big old patriarchal blowhard, stare for stare. The real sizzle in her chemistry with Spencer (who, gifted though he may be as an actor, radiates joy-killing sanctimony that keeps him at arm's length for me) is her refusal to buckle to his bullying, nor hold a grudge about it, nor lose her feminine cheer in the process, all of which makes her a modern heroine and a wise woman of the first class... Maybe it's true she always played herself, but it was a self that could encompass any character or role, the way the sea encompasses the sailor.

6. Nancy Reagan as child psychologist Dr. Canford - Shadow on the Wall (1950)
Perhaps this unique character slipped by the censors because having an
adult male psychiatrist playing dolly games with a child to exhume their inner traumas would be creepy, but
it's great and rare to see an unencumbered professional female character
like this in a film, even today (compare her with, say, the doormat sex-starved shrinks in THE DEPARTED or BASIC INSTINCT) and Nancy Davis pulls it off
very well. It's easily her best work, and I say that having seen almost nothing else of hers, for reasons you might well guess. She manages to take over important
medical duties from men without them squawking or belittling her, and
she even educates older men lawyer friends of the family on the latest
breaks in the developing field of child psychology. No man comes along feeling he has to 'put her in her place' with a smug passive aggressive put-down come-on (as endured by Ingrid Bergman in SPELLBOUND) or make her choose between marriage and career because 'no wife of mine is going to work blah blah.'

While it's great this film exists, it makes
Hollywood's long history of sexist inequality that much more glaring by
contrast, since it never had its own series, or spawned imitators - and it's a shame, as there's much left to uncover, certainly it puts Nancy Davis in a light that even pro-drug reprobates like myself have no choice but to admire

6.5 Alannis Morisette as God - Dogma (1999)
As a god that's both an avenging apocalypse-toting Kali 2000 and a goofy Harpo Marxist sprite, Alanis's God is one of the few redeeming features of Kevin Smith's overwritten, under-directed, tediously foul-mouthed ode to the pantheon of Catholic angels. Electrifying and 'in the moment' Morisette proves you can be wise and wild without sacrificing ditziness. As Television without Pity notes, Morissette-God:

7. Cecil Cunningham as Aunt Patsy - The Awful Truth (1937)and Maude Euburne as Ma Pettingille - Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Nowadays this role is occupied by the gay cubicle mate, or a college buddy working in a sports bar (you know -the person you turn to when you're suddenly single). You crash on their couch and they convince you to either call or not call home. They're single and doing whatever the fuck they want, sharp as tacks. They know just about all there is to know about men, women, and the idiots they make of themselves when they fall over each other. Never, however, do they try to meddle in the foolish strivings of the more romantic generations, except as a combination sage counsel, shoulder to cry on, and smart aleck observer / eye roller. They are the one type of old person I'd be proud to grow into...the sage Buddha-meets-Algonquin caustic of classic screwball comedy.

8. Dorothy Neumann as Meg Maud - The Undead (1957)
She's
a good witch, despite her crooked nose (putting to rest the
libelous claim of Glenda in OZ that "only bad witches are ugly"), and I
love the casual way she asks the stranger at her door "Are you from this
era or from a time yet to be?" as if hypnotists from the future like
himself were
not uncommon in her bizarre Middle Ages dimension. Neumann was a great find for Corman; she's to the putty nose and chin born, but with a genuine ease, wisdom and
spry sweetness that makes her Meg equally reassuring and spooky.

8.b. Edit Barrett as Mrs. Rand - I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Warm-hearted and smart, Mrs. Rand uses voodoo to sugar-coat real medicine and common motherly sense to ground the entire island of San Sebastian. She may have used voodoo to kill the mind of hated daughter-in-la Jessica (or did she? In Lewton's never-far-from-reality dream world, it's impossible to tell), it's her warm spirit that anchors Frances Dee's quite elegant performance as Betsy. "You could do it, Betsy," notes Wes in regards to finishing the job. "You have the drugs!"

9. Bea Richards as Baby Suggs - Beloved (1998)
Tak Fujimoto's cinematography captures the purple brilliance of black skin at twilight with precise poetry, but director Jonathan Demme couldn't really find the right ground to make Beloved breathe. Still, it's a wealth of mythopoetic realism: old plantation horror stories, ghosts, folktales, superstition, and religion all bleed into the mundane muddy life of an escape slave woman haunted by the past. But then there's Bea Richards' awesome Suggs, the backwoods earth mother / preacher. Bea Richards alone seems to grasp the folksy deconstruction at work and morphs herself into the humble epitome of a wise woman in a way that's genuinely compelling. The end has her conducting a big gathering in the woods where she tells the congregation to love their hands. I think of her a lot when I'm stressed out in the grocery store... just keep thinking of Baby Suggs telling me to look at my hands. Keep it simple and you'll never go far wrong.

10. Maria Ouspenskaya - The Wolfman(1941) / Marlene Dietrich -Touch of Evil (1959)
Unfortunately gypsies have had a hard time throughout history--first Middle Age witch hunters and then the Nazis tried to wipe them out. But as archetypes they survive and are without parallel or antecedent, especially as fortune telling, whip-cracking, Esmeralda-pimping relics of a deeper connection to arcane truths Christianity has tried for thousands of years to eradicate. Ouspenskaya gave the role of Wolfman's advisor a lot of sympathy, as Theron Neel notes:

Ouspenskaya’s main purpose is to act mysterious and deliver ominous
expository dialogue to let the audience—and Lon Chaney Jr.’s Lawrence
Talbot—know what’s going to happen. This she does wonderfully, but she
does oh so much more. As the mother of the doomed Bela (played by Bela
Lugosi), she’s oddly touching as a loving parent who has somehow
accepted the fact that her son is damned. Ouspenskaya treated the
character of Maleva as seriously as any other she’d played. (Portraits in Horror)

Dietrich's gypsy woman is no slouch either, but a whole different sort, more adult and ennui-ridden, more stand-offish yet just as 'oddly touching' and compassionate in her cold way; Ouspenskaya doesn't have to recall years of sleeping with Larry Talbot for money while he hangs out at her place guzzling a case of whiskey listening to an old pianola but the effect is the same. Dietrich's character understands Hank - might be the closest thing he has, Pete aside, to a love (his wife was strangled). Still, Dietrich comes running out of her salon after Hank Quinlan bites it in a last minute gesture of compassion for her fallen ex-John, noting "he was some kind of a man." Up until then she seldom speaks without a cigarillo in her mouth, can turn questions like "what can I offer you?" into hollow ghost slaps, is usually counting money, doing the accounts or reading tarot cards, and telling Hank his future is "all used up" without even having to turn over a card. Like Ouspenskaya's gypsy she is the earth mother to a falling shadow self (both Hank and Maleva's son Bela are in the Shadow section of this series). They represent the wellspring of nonjudgmental forgiveness that comes from the wise woman archetype, which western civilization has tried so hard to cement over (with by-the-book blind men like Vargas and blank-slate sex objects like his wife Susan). In the twilit world of the gypsy seer, even monsters can find motherly love. Too bad it's the gypsies that are always first on any culture's kill list, right after the monsters, of course, and women in general.

11. Elizabeth Taylor (gone gray) - Giant (1956)
(Taylor's) character in Giant clashes with her newfound homeland
Texas' narrow-minded patriarchal ways, and everyone of the old guard
just has to put up with it. None of their patronizing crap works, even
when she's way out of line they can't rope her in. So they surrender,
like aggressive dogs surrendering to Cesar Milan in the Dog Whisperer. Like
said dogs, these Texans realize they love her for standing up to them without holding a grudge about it, and in the process she
becomes the social mother conscience for all of Rich Oil Texas. She
creates a new respect and admiration for the voice of dissent. It's
okay to walk away having lost a fight with Liz Taylor. She'll always let you try again. She might even let you think you won once in awhile, or at least reached a draw. She knows how to back off before doing any permanent damage, let you heal and then--as if by magic--that thing you were so obstinate about seems to have shrunk in import. She has her way, and you keep your pride. And even if not, after she bloodies your nose she'll gently wipe it for you with her own perfume-scented cloth, and that stuff is expensive. (see:Suddenly Last Summer)

12. Kim Hunter as Zira - Planet of the Apes (1968)
When you're captured by oppressive apes or aliens you always hope some nurturing earth mother scientist will come along and declare you an endangered species in need of protection. Zira's compassion for Heston-kind provides the sense that perhaps, somehow, things may turn out all right for human-ape relations. In the sequels she ends up giving birth to her own species, thanks to traveling back into the past, the ultimate in matriarchal self-creation.

12.5: Lorraine Bracco as Dolores Del Ruby - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)
Few people have seen this disaster from beginning to end, but I caught a whole middle stretch on IFC awhile ago, so got to see Dolores Del Ruby conducting peyote rituals and Bracco is awesome, dropping truth bombs like "playfulness ceases to have a serious purpose when it takes itself too seriously." What? On the page that kind of drivel is mad pretentious, a verbose hippy dipshit author (Tom Robbins) in love with his own voice. And the movie fits all that too, but not Bracco. She stands above. I still wish there could be an alternate cut of Blake Edward's Switch where Bracco goes all-the-way with Ellen Barkin (who's a straight male reincarnated), will she ever get the credit she's due?

Irregardless, matriarchs of the psychedelic bent are so far between I have to at least mention her as extra credit. Okay, mother?

Not to self-promote here (I hate that), but when writing my "Nothing Men" novel I tried to tap into that wise woman spirit for one of my main characters ... but at the same time turning her into something totally despicable. Various reader reaction has told me mission accomplished, as it is often someone's favorite character in the entire book even though she is horrible. The reason you may not see more of it on screen is because it is hard to pull off without it coming across as ridiculous. I balanced a line in my novel, and there were times I thought I may have crossed it. It was not easy, and I can't imagine any writer wants to flub that type of character.

I've got to tell you that your blog is one of my all time favorites! It's brilliant and engaging, and I'm always looking forward to seeing what you'll write about next! You've always got your finger on the pulse of coolness!

It's that time of year, a curated list of bizarro cage-free horror films casual classic horror fans may not know of, by me, Erich -...

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Mission Statement

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piercing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."- H.P Lovecraft